Did 00s beauty standards leave millennial women with lasting body image issues

[ChocolateSqueezyyogurts]

I turned 13 just before the millennium so am a typical millennial. I have been thinking about how I have struggled with body image issues all of my adult life and was wondering how many other women my age have experienced the same. We grew up in a time when it was "fashionable" to be thin. Indy Sleaze, Kate Moss' Topshop range, reality TV showing people like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. It was like the thinner you were the more attractive and healthy you were, and anybody who wasn't skinny was considered fat. Im 40 this year and I cant remember a time I havent been trying to loose weight despite being between a size 8-12 throughout my adult years. Im sure this has been an issue for other generations but I think that body positively is much more of a thing for teenagers/young women now. How much did the 00's fuck up our attitudes towards weight?

I actually googled this because I thought exactly the same, remembered her as being one of the most extreme size 0 examples, but I think the OP is saying when she originally became famous she wasn't, which if you look at the first few seasons of the simple life, is true, she's actually bigger than PH, with puppy fat, rounded cheeks etc. Still not big by any means of the word but she clearly lost an extreme amount of weight (considering she was small to start with) rather than always being that size.

Women have always had to be slim to be generally considered attractive. Yes there are times when 'curves' are fashionable but those beautiful curvy women will still have small waists, they won't be size 16/18 'curvy'.

Growing up in the era of heroin chic in the 90s was just as bad. There's always been unhealthy beauty standards. Now it's all about surgery and filler and backstreet weighloss jabs.

I think that women have perceived their bodies as inherently bad, wrong and in need of "fixing" since at the very least the Christian concept of Adam and Eve and all of that shit!

We are constantly told by the media / society / other women / men that we are too hairy, our fat is distributed incorrectly - so sometimes it should be in our lips, sometimes in our tits, sometimes in our bums - but wherever it sits naturally it is wrong. Sometimes we should be tanned, sometimes we should be pale, sometimes we should have plucked eyebrows, sometimes we should have full beetle brows. Sometimes we should look athletic with no waist, sometimes we should look like an hour glass, sometimes our hair should be long and smooth, other times it should be curly or tousled.

Our behaviour is also up for endless comment. Sometimes we should be the all powerful matriarch, sometimes we should be meek and silent, sometimes we should laddish and lairy, sometimes we should be competing equally with men, sometimes we should be embracing our differences, sometimes we should be giving sex away for free, sometimes we should be reserving sex for marriage, sometimes we should be non-sexual in one environment and sexual in another, sometimes we should be educated and sometimes we should not be.

On and on and on it goes! So, sadly it isn't just millennials @ChocolateSqueezyyogurts it is for millennium! In fact as I type this out, there is an ad on my MN screen and the byline is: "Lost the weight. Kept my face."!!!!!! So, two messages there, be slim but don't look haggard or like you've actually lost weight. We can't win!!!!

Swings and roundabouts on this, as someone born in 1990.

• lots of people in grandmother's generation were tiny and talked about it a lot, which filter down into my mothers generation. Lots of openly being rude to people's face about their weight and talking behind their back, in the older generation there was lots of chat about doing it so men wanted you, how a girl 'should' look etc, mothers generation had less of that angle but still talked a lot about other people gaining/losing weight and themselves.
• TV shows talked about weight and made fun of fat people, especially women, constantly.
• magazines were all about inventing new things to be self conscious of and all the things mentioned on this thread already. Justice for Jessica Simpson, I saw 'that' photo again recently and she was so beautiful.

Nowadays you dont get it in tv shows or magazines so much unless its a real shit rag (looking at you DM)
Parents and grandparents lived through the rise in discussion about eating disorders so you get less of this outright talk in families, less telling people to their face, however people do still use fat as an insult and talk about other people's weight, but a lot more people do realise its not good for children/teens to hear about it.
Body positivity has done wonders for having role models in media, online etc of different sizes. Some very dim people think body positivity means 'glorifying unhealthy bodies' without realising a lot of body positivity stuff is done by people with healthy bmi's!
However, constant access to algorithm driven content, and people being able to edit themselves the way magazines edited models is a massive, massive problem. And i dont think a lot of parents would realise, hey, maybe if the only people my child ever gets exposed to online are a size 6 with a perfect nose and hair, this might make them think this is normal and THEY are the outlier, rather than them looking constantly at the top 1% most western ideal - beautiful people on the planet.

I agree. I'm a couple of years older than you OP and certainly I was brought up with the idea that you basically had to dress to minimise/cover up the 'less perfect' bits of your body. I have a natyurally big bum and thighs whatever my overall weight, and I don't think I've worn shorts since the age of about 16.

Youngsters these days wear whatever they want at all body types which I think is a much healthier attitude. But I'm ashamed to admit that because of my upbringing I do occasionally catch my inner monologue saying "why are they letting everything hang out".

that's both historically inaccurate (Rubenesque, anyone - the models definitely don't have small waists; belly rolls and at least 16-18 in modern sizes) and a very white, western-centric assumption of 'attractive'.

I should have been more specific, the op is talking about millennials, so I was talking about other generations of women in living memory. Generation x, boomers etc. I am in my 60s and girls and women who weren't slim, were regarded as fat, and generally unattractive. I was just pointing out that its not a strictly millennial thing.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean. I see quite a lot of young girls now wearing whatever they want regardless of body size, even if they are a bit bigger. This makes me wish I has the confidence to do that in the 00s but we we told to cover up if you wernt skinny. I just remember everyone aiming to be as skinny as possible not a healthy weight. The Martine Mcutcheon scene in Love Actually that somebody else has mentioned was true to real life I felt. The same with Bridget Jones.

I think it’s definitely true. I am an older millennial, was a teen during the heroin chic years and was heavily influenced by it. I hate my look if I’m not skinny. Have been on a permanent diet since my 20s. I have also had to re-train my thinking regarding other women - for many years I would think perfectly normal sized women were fat, and regarded KK as very fat and unattractive. I am better at this now but still have to check myself at times.

I think being bothered by it is a very Anglo attitude. In continental Europe and Asia fatness is much more frowned upon and the standards have always been more unforgiving. Glad I don't live there, like, but we are a minority world view on this.

Every single era in history has had beauty standards for women many of which were unhealthy or painful to achieve.

White skin. Bound feet. Neck extenders. Hairlessness. Heels. Corsets. At times overly thin has been fashionable, at other times being overweight has been fashionable.

Currently we have Botox, fillers, veneers, plastic surgery and the return of skeletal figures.

Yes the skinny trend and fat shaming in the 90s was unhelpful but I don’t think it’s anything unusual, sadly.

Sigh. You were not the only generation to experience the bodyshaming backlash to advances in women's rights. Same thing happened after women got the vote in the 1920s (Flappers), the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s (Twiggy) and then the mass influx of the women of GenX into the workplace (Heroin Chic). And now we are getting the Ozempic look in response to #metoo.

I remember thinking Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox on the later series of friends were complete body goals and wishing I could look like them.

Now when I watch those series of friends they just look emaciated, way too skinny (and hair too flat lol)

I think as much as young people will scream they don’t do this, I think they do, they defend the right to do it, dress as you please, will say they look fine, but it doesn’t mean they think it looks good.

the simple fact is for most cultures globally fat is not perceived as attractive by the majority, I think that’s instinctive and to do with health

spmeone mentioned rubensque up thread, but rubenesque was not overweight, it was curvy, natural bodies, if you look at the actual pictures, what they were was untoned, soft, maybe flabby.

these women dressed with corsets to pull their waists in, and bum rolls and padding to emphasise their hips and backsides, and give an exaggerated hour glass shape. The pressure was similar.

thiness in the 16th and 17th century was equated to poverty…women in the work houses. But fat wasn’t revered either. It was soft curvy bodies with an exaggerated hour glass to show wealth.

I’d also add to this and now say poverty is now more linked to overweight than wealth. It is turned round where it is seen the wealthy have access to healthy foods, gyms etc, so can be slim, where as poorer people do not, and as such are more tended to be overweight. Of course this is not a blanket truth, plenty of fat wealthy people and thin poor people and everything in between.

the advent of weight loss drugs will,also exacerbate this, due to the cost.

I'm similar age and my body image was already destroyed by my mother before we reached the millennium. I'm the middle of three girls and we have all had eating disorders and terrible body image.

I can remember no longer being able to fit into my sister's age 3 clothes and having the sense that this was "wrong" I was 7. My mum put us all on the carol vorderman juice diet when I was 8, we had one meal a day but with very small portions. I had anorexia and bulimia as a teen and life long disordered eating. .

The thing my mum is most proud of me for is being a size 6-8 and losing my "baby weight" by 2 weeks post partum in both my pregnancies.